I still have an external floppy drive for emergencies.
What the…? It uses a parallel port?! D’oh!
Yes, because all x86 processors boot in 16-bit mode; the OS is responsible for getting them into the more advanced states.
Now, the hardware surrounding the processor is something else entirely. Moving from an old DOS-era DOS to FreeDOS might help here, but a better solution is likely running the DOS environment in an emulator of some kind, like QEMU.
A related question is, “Can 64-bit x86 CPUs in 64-bit mode run 16-bit x86 software without emulation?” and the answer to that is “No”, because VM86 mode is lost when 64-bit x86 CPUs transition into Long Mode (that is, 64-bit mode). No big loss, really; at this point, full system emulation is more useful anyway, and not meaningfully less efficient.
Well, there are USB floppy disk drives too. I think I have one buried away here somewhere.
If my computer has broken down to the point that I need a floppy disk to fix it, it’s time to get a new computer.
If I need 5 answers?
io.sys
msdos.sys
command.com
These three are the only ones that are needed to boot. Many times, people added
config.sys
autoexec.bat
To setup their OS the way they wanted it and automatically run programs.
So the question was worded wrong.
Hey Akash, how old do you feel now?
Last Activity: 02-22-2006 10:08 AM
I doubt we’ll get an answer any time soon.
I was wondering where on God’s Green Earth the person was applying where this would be necessary information before I saw the post date.
Even the OP hasn’t been seen in these here parts since 2009. Hope he got his DOS to boot. Or maybe he gave it the boot?
Barbados.
Chances are, everyone from that earlier thread are dead by now.
Cannot read the contents of msdos.sys? Maybe you cannot, but I can. The letters are 1337, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I will not utter here. But in plain English this is what it means:
Three files for the DOS boxes under the sky,
Seven for the UNIX-lords in their halls of chown,
Nine for OS’s of days gone by,
One for the Dark Lord Gates on his NT throne,
In the land of Redmond where the windows lie.
One file to rule them all,
One file to find them.
One file to bring them all,
And in the NT bind them,
In the land of Redmond where the windows lie.
Hey, if it rained all the time where you live, you’d turn evil, too.
Whack-A-Mole is still with us, though apparently he was Jeff_42 then.